8 Answers
8

Yes, there is a way to do this: Just open the run dialog box by pressing Win + R and type in "recent". There you can see your recent activities.

Note: "Recent places" can be access under Windows Explorer's under "Favorite".

Also you can create a shortcut of the "recent" at your desktop and then pin it to start menu. For this just right click on desktop and seclect New>Shortcut. In file location type the path

C:/users/username/recent

and click the Next button, it will prompt the name and now click Finish. You will see the shortcut on desktop now and you can pin it to start menu. Also you can define Hotkey for this from properties now.

No idea why this has been accepted as an answer. Typing "recent" into the run dialog results in an error.
–
pmcsMar 7 '13 at 4:39

3

May be something going wrong on your side, I had use that command without any problem. Alas! now I don't have Win8 for your query at the moment, but I'm sure you should have to give a try to sfc /scannnow for any error on your system.
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avirkMar 7 '13 at 7:13

This should be the right answer (for Win 8).
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mshsayemJun 20 '13 at 14:48

In Windows 8 I have a "Recent" joint folder in C:\Users\<username>, which points to that AppData folder. Have you browsed that folder in your PC to see if it's really not there? You should see it if you run this from a console: C:\Users\yourusername>dir r* /a.
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AndrewFeb 9 at 12:51

This is a nice solution. To make it even better and quicker to access your recent items, you can create a Windows Taskbar toolbar item out of this since it acts like a folder. Just right-click the taskbar -> Toolbars -> New toolbar... and select the new reference created by the cmd above. Now you can access the items directly from the taskbar!
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Neil MonroeMar 19 '14 at 19:47

Launch File Explorer. There is a Recent Places link under Favourites. This includes all sorts of things that are not documents.

You could pin the associated application to the Taskbar. You then right-click and see a jumplist of recent documents, but this is application specific. All we want is an easily exposed method to see a menu list of recent documents that doesn't require you to launch a shortcut to a folder of other shortcuts. Windows 7 had this, Windows 8 does not.